Wednesday, November 29, 2017

For purposes of our retroactive tracking, here are reorders and advance orders placed with Diamond Comic Distributors between November 20-26, 2017.

TOP REORDERED ITEMS for November 20-26, 2017 (in dollars)

These are items that have already shipped, but have been receiving additional orders. In most cases below, the items are in stock and so the orders are being filled; occasionally items are back-ordered, so their reorders will enter into the channel once they become available.

These are ranked by invoiced dollars, so retailers' discounts have already applied to the totals before ranking.

The lenticular version of DC's Doomsday Clock #1, which went on sale Nov. 22, is the top reordered comic book.

The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.

And now, a look into the future. These are items that have not yet shipped, but for which the Final Order Deadlines have passed. These reorders, if books are available to fill them, may or may not land in the same shipping month as the books' release weeks, so a book's presence on this chart can mean that an item might make a repeat appearance in Diamond's monthly top-seller charts.

The top comic is Doomsday Clock #2, which is expected to reach stores Dec. 27. Remember, this is ranked by invoiced dollars and not units.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

For purposes of our retroactive tracking, here are reorders and advance orders placed with Diamond Comic Distributors between November 13-19, 2017.

TOP REORDERED ITEMS for November 13-19, 2017 (in dollars)

These are items that have already shipped, but have been receiving additional orders. In most cases below, the items are in stock and so the orders are being filled; occasionally items are back-ordered, so their reorders will enter into the channel once they become available.

These are ranked by invoiced dollars, so retailers' discounts have already applied to the totals before ranking.

Batman Lost #1, which went on sale Nov. 8, is the top reordered comic book.

The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.

And now, a look into the future. These are items that have not yet shipped, but for which the Final Order Deadlines have passed. These reorders, if books are available to fill them, may or may not land in the same shipping month as the books' release weeks, so a book's presence on this chart can mean that an item might make a repeat appearance in Diamond's monthly top-seller charts.

The top comic is the second printing of Batman Who Laughs #1, which is expected to reach stores Dec. 13. Remember, this is ranked by invoiced dollars and not units.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

For purposes of our retroactive tracking, here are reorders and advance orders placed with Diamond Comic Distributors between November 6-12, 2017.

TOP REORDERED ITEMS for November 6-12, 2017 (in dollars)

These are items that have already shipped, but have been receiving additional orders. In most cases below, the items are in stock and so the orders are being filled; occasionally items are back-ordered, so their reorders will enter into the channel once they become available.

These are ranked by invoiced dollars, so retailers' discounts have already applied to the totals before ranking.

Batman Lost #1, which went on sale Nov. 8, is the top reordered comic book.

The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.

And now, a look into the future. These are items that have not yet shipped, but for which the Final Order Deadlines have passed. These reorders, if books are available to fill them, may or may not land in the same shipping month as the books' release weeks, so a book's presence on this chart can mean that an item might make a repeat appearance in Diamond's monthly top-seller charts.

The top comic is the third printing of Batman White Knight #1, which is expected to reach stores Dec. 6. Remember, this is ranked by invoiced dollars and not units.

Monday, November 13, 2017

October brought the restoration of many Marvel titles' legacy numberings (as well as the creation of several legacy titles through the cobbling-together of multiple miniseries) as part of its Legacy event. The promotion, which required retailers to meet certain thresholds to order special lenticular covers, helped Marvel and the Direct Market's orders increase 5% over September, but paled in comparison to sales from the previous October, the Rebirth-driven second-strongest month of 2016. Click to see comics order estimates for October 2017.

Many fewer new comics were released this October versus the year before, however: 484, down 8% or 52 comics from the year previous. Perhaps owing to Legacy, Marvel's release slate was its smallest in a long time; Marvel released 81 new comic books, its fewest since February 2016 and eight fewer than it released last October. The 7.62 million comic books retailers ordered, while nearly identical to orders from the previous two months, was off 21% from 2016's overstuffed October; that shortfall likely drops to 18% with the Loot Crate book from that month removed. Marvel's Thor #700 was its top seller, in advance of the release of the popular film, Thor: Ragnarok.

The Dark Multiverse event at DC — including Dark Nights: Metal #3 (with North American shipments of 158,700 copies) and various Batman specials — dominated the top 10; orders continued to come in for Dark Nights: Metal #1, bringing it above 271,000 copies. It remains second on the list of top-sellers for 2017. While the Marvel Legacy lenticular covers were priced identically with their normal counterparts and thus combined in rankings by Diamond, two DC issues had different prices and were not. With orders fused, Action Comics #989 and #990 would have placed 9th and 12th respectively.

Mister Miracle, one of September's most heavily reordered books, saw orders off very slightly from its second to third issue.

Image saw its dollar market share climb above 11% thanks to strong performances in the graphic novel category; the Here's Negan hardcover alone had first-month North American orders above 19,300 copies, with a full retail dollar value of nearly $400,000. (Edit: An errant decimal point resulted in an earlier incorrect headline.) Trade paperback and hardcover sales to retailers overall were up slightly over the previous year.

Friday, November 10, 2017

Earlier this week in advance of the release of the Diamond Comic Distributors preliminary sales report for October 2017, I tweeted that the same month last year would be very hard to beat, even with Marvel's Legacy event and DC's Dark Multiverse storyline underway. The second best month of 2016 in the Direct Market, October 2016had a huge number of new releases: 536 new comics, the most all year, many of which were double-shipped Rebirth issues. And it was further assisted on the unit sales side by several hundred thousand copies of Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York #1 which went to Loot Crate; it was the largest number of copies Diamond shipped of any comic book all year.

But while beating last October seemed unlikely, I noted that trajectory mattered — and while Diamond today reported that orders for comics, graphic novels, and magazines were down 11% versus last October, they were up 5% over September 2017, a month which also had four shipping weeks. The month's top seller was Dark Nights: Metal #3, with six other Batman releases making the Top 10; three Marvel Legacy issues rounded out the top 10, including the second-place Thor #700.Comichron calculates that retailers ordered $45.58 million in print material at full retail, $2 million more than September and almost tying the total from this August, which had an extra shipping week. While both were down versus last October, Marvel and DC sold retailers more dollars worth of merchandise this October than they did in September — and Image continued to outpace the market, beating its year-ago total by 8% and climbing to an 11.46% market share.

Speaking of Image, a positive sign was to be found in Diamond's graphic novel sales to comics shops, which managed to beat their pace from the same month a year ago by more than 2%. That's the first graphic novel year-over-year win since May, the only other month this year in which that happened. Image had six of the top ten graphic novels, including the top-selling Walking Dead: Here's Negan hardcover. The number of new graphic novels that shipped this October is the same as last October: 345.

Meanwhile, many fewer new comics were released this October: 484, down 8% or 52 comics from last October. Perhaps owing to Legacy, Marvel's release slate was its smallest in a long time; Marvel released 81 new comic books, its fewest since February 2016and eight fewer than it released last October. The 7.62 million comic books retailers ordered, while nearly identical to orders from the previous two months, was off 21% from 2016's overstuffed October; that shortfall likely drops to 18% with the Loot Crate book removed.

While October starts the fourth quarter out behind the same period last year, last October was the market's last peak month, in a sense; eleven out of the next twelve months would see declines. The comparatives get easier from here; there's a good chance that the overall year could end up only off in the single digits. That's not great news, but it would represent a boost over the worst point of the year, and would keep the Direct market ahead of the recession-year 10% drop seen in 2009.

As I noted in the Off Panel podcastwhich released earlier this week, perspective means a great deal to interpreting the market's position; while Star Wars' return to Marvel and Rebirth posed tough comparatives for 2016 and 2017 respectively, it's worth remembering that through October, the Direct Market is up 29.2%, or nearly $100 million, over its position at the same point of 2011, the year the New 52 helped re-energize sales. Dollar volumes this September and October, in fact, roundly beat those from the first two New 52 months — and while inflation plays a role, it does not account for all of the increases.Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry's retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

For purposes of our retroactive tracking, here are reorders and advance orders placed with Diamond Comic Distributors between October 30-November 5, 2017.

TOP REORDERED ITEMS for October 30-November 5, 2017 (in dollars)

These are items that have already shipped, but have been receiving additional orders. In most cases below, the items are in stock and so the orders are being filled; occasionally items are back-ordered, so their reorders will enter into the channel once they become available.

These are ranked by invoiced dollars, so retailers' discounts have already applied to the totals before ranking.

Marvel ran a buy-one-get-one-free promotion for much of its backstock, resulting in it monopolizing the reorder charts during the week. No comic books at all made the Top 25!

The links in the table go to the Diamond information pages for each book.

TOP ADVANCE REORDERED ITEMS for October 30-November 5, 2017(in dollars)

And now, a look into the future. These are items that have not yet shipped, but for which the Final Order Deadlines have passed. These reorders, if books are available to fill them, may or may not land in the same shipping month as the books' release weeks, so a book's presence on this chart can mean that an item might make a repeat appearance in Diamond's monthly top-seller charts.

The top comic is the Artgerm variant of Phoenix: Resurrection #1, which is expected to reach stores Dec. 27. Remember, this is ranked by invoiced dollars and not units.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

With news everywhere today about writer Brian Michael Bendis's departure from Marvel to an exclusive multi-year contract with DC, Comichron presents a look back to the beginning of his run with the publisher.

It's a bit of a complicated series to report on because it's actually under two different postal licenses: the 2000-2009 series was rebooted with a new #1 and a new license. But the rebooted series resumed the original's numbering with #150. There don't seem to be any reports on the third series by that name, nor the Marvel Universe-branded title.

Another unusual element is that Ultimate Spider-Man #1 has many reprints, and those appear to have impacted the first year's report; Marvel's reported sales for average issues in the year are far, far higher than anything anyone else was doing in comics at the time. It's possible to compare those sales, which include most channels, with just the sales to the Direct Market beginning with the first issue in September 2000; remember, however, that in that era reorders were not reported, so you won't see the very large traffic in reprints that followed.

Monday, November 6, 2017

This month begins my twenty-fifth year of covering the comics industry professionally (for those counting, that means the actual anniversary is November 2018), and I speak about a number of the datasets that I've been developing over the years on the new Off Panel podcast with David Harper of SKTCHD.

It's a wide-ranging discussion, looking at the difference between distributor shipment figures and overall sales, touching on comic book variants and how they've changed over the years, and getting into the importance of having circulation figures to both retailers and the aftermarket. There's also some discussion of current market conditions — and many references to baseball statistics!

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